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Indian art

Indian art consists of a variety of art forms, including painting, sculpture, pottery, and textile arts such as woven silk. Geographically, it spans the entire Indian subcontinent, including what is now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and at times eastern Afghanistan. A strong sense of design is characteristic of Indian art and can be observed in its modern and traditional forms.

Indian art

The origin of Indian art can be traced to prehistoric settlements in the 3rd millennium BCE. On its way to modern times, Indian art has had cultural influences, as well as religious influences such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and Islam. In spite of this complex mixture of religious traditions, generally, the prevailing artistic style at any time and place has been shared by the major religious groups.

In historic art, sculpture in stone and metal, mainly religious, has survived the Indian climate better than other media and provides most of the best remains. Many of the most important ancient finds that are not in carved stone come from the surrounding, drier regions rather than India itself. Indian funeral and philosophic traditions exclude grave goods, which is the main source of ancient art in other cultures.

Indian artist styles historically followed Indian religions out of the subcontinent, having an especially large influence in Tibet, South East Asia and China. Indian art has itself received influences at times, especially from Central Asia and Iran, and Europe.

Early Indian art

Rock art

 
Rock painting at one of the Bhimbetka rock shelters.
 
Prehistoric petroglyphs in the Edakkal Caves, Wayanad

Rock art of India includes rock relief carvings, engravings and paintings, some (but by no means all) from the South Asian Stone Age. It is estimated there are about 1300 rock art sites with over a quarter of a million figures and figurines.[1] The earliest rock carvings in India were discovered by Archibald Carlleyle, twelve years before the Cave of Altamira in Spain,[2] although his work only came to light much later via J Cockburn (1899).[3]

Dr. V. S. Wakankar discovered several painted rock shelters in Central India, situated around the Vindhya mountain range. Of these, the c. 750 sites making up the Bhimbetka rock shelters have been enrolled as a UNESCO World Heritage Site; the earliest paintings are some 10,000 years old.[4][5][6][7][8] The paintings in these sites commonly depicted scenes of human life alongside animals, and hunts with stone implements. Their style varied with region and age, but the most common characteristic was a red wash made using a powdered mineral called geru, which is a form of Iron Oxide (Hematite).[9]

Indus Valley civilisation (c. 3300 BC – c. 1750 BC)

Despite its widespread and sophistication, the Indus Valley civilisation seems to have taken no interest in public large-scale art, unlike many other early civilizations. A number of gold, terracotta and stone figurines of girls in dancing poses reveal the presence of some forms of dance. Additionally, the terracotta figurines included cows, bears, monkeys, and dogs.

Much the most common form of figurative art found is small carved seals. Thousands of steatite seals have been recovered, and their physical character is fairly consistent. In size they range from 34 inch to 112 inches square. In most cases they have a pierced boss at the back to accommodate a cord for handling or for use as personal adornment. Seals have been found at Mohenjo-Daro depicting a figure standing on its head, and another, on the Pashupati Seal, sitting cross-legged in a yoga-like pose. This figure has been variously identified. Sir John Marshall identified a resemblance to the Hindu god, Shiva.[10]

The animal depicted on a majority of seals at sites of the mature period has not been clearly identified. Part bull, part zebra, with a majestic horn, it has been a source of speculation. As yet, there is insufficient evidence to substantiate claims that the image had religious or cultist significance, but the prevalence of the image raises the question of whether or not the animals in images of the IVC are religious symbols.[11] The most famous piece is the bronze Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-Daro, which shows remarkably advanced modelling of the human figure for this early date.[12]

After the end of the Indus Valley Civilization, there is a surprising absence of art of any great degree of sophistication until the Buddhist era. It is thought that this partly reflects the use of perishable organic materials such as wood.[13]

Vedic period

 
Symbolic, possibly anthropomorphological artefact. Copper Hoard culture (2nd millennium BCE). Mathura Museum.

The millennium following the collapse of the Indus Valley civilisation, coinciding with the Indo-Aryan migration during the Vedic period, is devoid of anthropomorphical depictions.[14] It has been suggested that the early Vedic religion focused exclusively on the worship of purely "elementary forces of nature by means of elaborate sacrifices", which did not lend themselves easily to anthropomorphological representations.[15][16] Various artefacts may belong to the Copper Hoard culture (2nd millennium BCE), some of them suggesting anthropomorphological characteristics.[17] Interpretations vary as to the exact signification of these artifacts, or even the culture and the periodization to which they belonged.[17] Some examples of artistic expression also appear in abstract pottery designs during the Black and red ware culture (1450-1200 BCE) or the Painted Grey Ware culture (1200-600 BCE), with finds in a wide area, including the area of Mathura.[17]

After a gap of about a thousand years, most of the early finds correspond to what is called the "second period of urbanization" in the middle of the 1st millennium BCE.[17] The anthropomorphic depiction of various deities apparently started in the middle of the 1st millennium BCE, possibly as a consequence of the influx of foreign stimuli initiated with the Achaemenid conquest of the Indus Valley, and the rise of alternative local faiths challenging Vedism, such as Buddhism, Jainism and local popular cults.[14]

Mauryan art (c. 322 BCE – c. 185 BCE)

 
The Pataliputra capital, an early example of Mauryan stone sculpture, displaying Persian and Hellenistic influences. 3rd century BCE, Patna Museum

The north Indian Maurya Empire flourished from 322 BCE to 185 BCE, and at its maximum extent controlled all of the sub-continent except the extreme south as well as influences from Indian ancient traditions, and Ancient Persia,[18] as shown by the Pataliputra capital.

The emperor Ashoka, who died in 232 BCE, adopted Buddhism about half-way through his 40-year reign, and patronized several large stupas at key sites from the life of the Buddha, although very little decoration from the Mauryan period survives, and there may not have been much in the first place. There is more from various early sites of Indian rock-cut architecture.

The most famous survivals are the large animals surmounting several of the Pillars of Ashoka, which showed a confident and boldly mature style and craft and first of its kind iron casting without rust until date, which was in use by vedic people in rural areas of the country, though we have very few remains showing its development.[19] The famous detached Lion Capital of Ashoka, with four animals, was adopted as the official Emblem of India after Indian independence.[20] Mauryan sculpture and architecture is characterized by a very fine Mauryan polish given to the stone, which is rarely found in later periods.

Many small popular terracotta figurines are recovered in archaeology, in a range of often vigorous if somewhat crude styles. Both animals and human figures, usually females presumed to be deities, are found.[21]

Colossal Yaksha statuary (2nd century BCE)

Yakshas seem to have been the object of an important cult in the early periods of Indian history, many of them being known such as Kubera, king of the Yakshas, Manibhadra or Mudgarpani.[23] The Yakshas are a broad class of nature-spirits, usually benevolent, but sometimes mischievous or capricious, connected with water, fertility, trees, the forest, treasure and wilderness,[24][25] and were the object of popular worship.[26] Many of them were later incorporated into Buddhism, Jainism or Hinduism.[23]

In the 2nd century BCE, Yakshas became the focus of the creation of colossal cultic images, typically around 2 meters or more in height, which are considered as probably the first Indian anthropomorphic productions in stone.[27][23] Although few ancient Yaksha statues remain in good condition, the vigor of the style has been applauded, and expresses essentially Indian qualities.[27] They are often pot-bellied, two-armed and fierce-looking.[23] The Yakshas are often depicted with weapons or attributes, such as the Yaksha Mudgarpani who in the right hand holds a mudgar mace, and in the left hand the figure of a small standing devotee or child joining hands in prayer.[28][23] It is often suggested that the style of the colossal Yaksha statuary had an important influence on the creation of later divine images and human figures in India.[29] The female equivalent of the Yakshas were the Yakshinis, often associated with trees and children, and whose voluptuous figures became omnipresent in Indian art.[23]

Some Hellenistic influence, such as the geometrical folds of the drapery or the walking stance of the statues, has been suggested.[27] According to John Boardman, the hem of the dress in the monumental early Yaksha statues is derived from Greek art.[27] Describing the drapery of one of these statues, John Boardman writes: "It has no local antecedents and looks most like a Greek Late Archaic mannerism", and suggests it is possibly derived from the Hellenistic art of nearby Bactria where this design is known.[27]

In the production of colossal Yaksha statues carved in the round, which can be found in several locations in northern India, the art of Mathura is considered as the most advanced in quality and quantity during this period.[30]

Buddhist art (c. 150 BCE – c. 500 CE)

 
Crossbar medallion with elephant and riders, Mathura art, circa 150 BCE.[31]

The major survivals of Buddhist art begin in the period after the Mauryans, from which good quantities of sculpture survives. Some key sites are Sanchi, Bharhut and Amaravati, some of which remain in situ, with others in museums in India or around the world. Stupas were surrounded by ceremonial fences with four profusely carved toranas or ornamental gateways facing the cardinal directions. These are in stone, though clearly adopting forms developed in wood. They and the walls of the stupa itself can be heavily decorated with reliefs, mostly illustrating the lives of the Buddha. Gradually life-size figures were sculpted, initially in deep relief, but then free-standing.[32] Mathura was the most important centre in this development, which applied to Hindu and Jain art as well as Buddhist.[33] The facades and interiors of rock-cut chaitya prayer halls and monastic viharas have survived better than similar free-standing structures elsewhere, which were for long mostly in wood. The caves at Ajanta, Karle, Bhaja and elsewhere contain early sculpture, often outnumbered by later works such as iconic figures of the Buddha and bodhisattvas, which are not found before 100 CE at the least.

Buddhism developed an increasing emphasis on statues of the Buddha, which was greatly influenced by Hindu and Jain religious figurative art, The figures of this period which were also influenced by the Greco-Buddhist art of the centuries after the conquests of Alexander the Great. This fusion developed in the far north-west of India, especially Gandhara in modern Afghanistan and Pakistan.[34] The Indian Kushan Empire spread from Central Asia to include northern India in the early centuries CE, and briefly commissioned large statues that were portraits of the royal dynasty.[35]

Shunga Dynasty (c. 185 BCE – 72 BCE)

 
The Great Stupa at Sanchi, c. 273 BCE – 232 BCE (Mauryan Empire), enlarged c. 150 BCE – 50 BCE (Shunga Dynasty)

With the fall of the Maurya Empire, control of India was returned to the older custom of regional dynasties, one of the most significant of which was the Shunga Dynasty (c. 185 BCE – 72 BCE) of central India. During this period, as well as during the Satavahana Dynasty which occurred concurrently with the Shunga Dynasty in south India, some of the most significant early Buddhist architecture was created. Arguably, the most significant architecture of this dynasty is the stupa, a religious monument which usually holds a sacred relic of Buddhism. These relics were often, but not always, in some way directly connected to the Buddha. Due to the fact that these stupas contained remains of the Buddha himself, each stupa was venerated as being an extension of the Buddha's body, his enlightenment, and of his achievement of nirvana. The way in which Buddhists venerate the stupa is by walking around it in a clockwise manner.[36]

 
A monumental rock-cut cave, the Great Chaitya at Karla Caves, built circa 120 CE

One of the most notable examples of the Buddhist stupa from the Shunga Dynasty is The Great Stupa at Sanchi, which was thought to be founded by the Mauryan emperor Ashoka c. 273 BCE – 232 BCE during the Maurya Empire.[37] The Great Stupa was enlarged to its present diameter of 120 feet, covered with a stone casing, topped with a balcony and umbrella, and encircled with a stone railing during the Shunga Dynasty c. 150 BCE – 50 BCE.

In addition to architecture, another significant art form of the Shunga Dynasty is the elaborately moulded terracotta plaques. As seen in previous examples from the Mauryan Empire, a style in which surface detail, nudity, and sensuality is continued in the terracotta plaques of the Shunga Dynasty. The most common figural representations seen on these plaques are women, some of which are thought to be goddesses, who are mostly shown as bare-chested and wearing elaborate headdresses.[38]

Satavahana dynasty (c. 1st/3rd century BCE – c. 3rd century CE)

The Satavahana dynasty ruled in central India, and sponsored many large Buddhist monuments, stupas, temples, and prayer-halls, including the Amaravati Stupa, the Karla Caves, and the first phase of the Ajanta Caves.[39]

 
Bimbisara with his royal cortege issuing from the city of Rajagriha to visit the Buddha

Stupas are religious monuments built on burial mounds, which contain relics beneath a solid dome. Stupas in different areas of India may vary in structure, size, and design; however, their representational meanings are quite similar. They are designed based on a mandala, a graph of cosmos specific to Buddhism. A traditional stupa has a railing that provides a sacred path for Buddhist followers to practice devotional circumambulation in ritual settings. Also, ancient Indians considered caves as sacred places since they were inhabited by holy men and monks. A chaitya was constructed from a cave.[36]

Relief sculptures of Buddhist figures and epigraphs written in Brahmi characters are often found in divine places specific to Buddhism.[40] To celebrate the divine, Satavahana people also made stone images as the decoration in Buddhist architectures. Based on the knowledge of geometry and geology, they created ideal images using a set of complex techniques and tools such as chisels, hammers, and compasses with iron points.[41]

In addition, delicate Satavahana coins show the capacity of creating art in that period. The Satavahanas issued coins primarily in copper, lead and potin. Later on, silver came into use when producing coins. The coins usually have detailed portraits of rulers and inscriptions written in the language of Tamil and Telugu.[40]

Kushan Empire (c. 30 CE – c. 375 CE)

Officially established by Kujula Kadphises, the first Kushan emperor who united the Yuezhi tribes, the Kushan empire was a syncretic empire in central and southern Asia, including the regions of Gandhara and Mathura in northern India. From 127 to 151 CE, Gandharan reached its peak under the reign of Kanishka the Great. In this period, Kushan art inherited the Greco-Buddhist art.[42] Mahayana Buddhism flourished, and the depictions of Buddha as a human form first appeared in art. Wearing a monk's robe and a long length of cloth draped over the left shoulder and around the body, the Buddha was depicted with 32 major lakshanas (distinguishing marks), including a golden-colored body, an ushnisha (a protuberance) on the top of his head, heavy earrings, elongated earlobes, long arms, the impression of a chakra (wheel) on the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet, and the urna (a mark between his eyebrows).[36] One of the hallmarks of Gandharan art is its relation to naturalism of Hellenistic art. The naturalistic features found in Gandharan sculptures include the three-dimensional treatment of the drapery, with unregularized folds that are in realistic patterns of random shape and thickness. The physical form of the Buddha and his bodhisattvas are well-defined, solid, and muscular, with swelling chests, arms, and abdomens.[43] Buddhism and Buddhism art spread to Central Asia and the far East across Bactria and Sogdia, where the Kushan Empire met the Han Dynasty of China.[44]

Gupta art (c. 320 CE – c. 550 CE)

The Gupta period is generally regarded as a classic peak of north Indian art for all the major religious groups. Although painting was evidently widespread, and survives in the Ajanta Caves, the surviving works are almost all religious sculpture.

The period saw the emergence of the iconic carved stone deity in Hindu art, as well as the Buddha-figure and Jain tirthankara figures, these last often on a very large scale. The main centres of sculpture were Mathura Sarnath, and Gandhara, the last the centre of Greco-Buddhist art.

The Gupta period marked the "golden age" of classical Hinduism,[45] and saw the earliest constructed Hindu temple architecture, though survivals are not numerous.

Middle kingdoms and the Late Medieval period (c. 600 CE – c. 1300 CE)

Over this period Hindu temple architecture matured into a number of regional styles, and a large proportion of the art historical record for this period consists of temple sculpture, much of which remains in place. The political history of the middle kingdoms of India saw India divided into many states, and since much of the grandest building was commissioned by rulers and their court, this helped the development of regional differences. Painting, both on a large scale on walls, and in miniature forms, was no doubt very widely practiced, but survivals are rare. Medieval bronzes have most commonly survived from either the Tamil south, or the Himalayan foothills.

Dynasties of South India (c. 3rd century CE – c. 1300 CE)

Inscriptions on the Pillars of Ashoka mention coexistence of the northern kingdoms with the triumvirate of Chola, Chera and Pandya Tamil dynasties, situated south of the Vindhya mountains.[46] The medieval period witnessed the rise and fall of these kingdoms, in conjunction with other kingdoms in the area. It is during the decline and resurgence of these kingdoms that Hinduism was renewed. It fostered the construction of numerous temples and sculptures.

The Shore Temple at Mamallapuram constructed by the Pallavas symbolizes early Hindu architecture, with its monolithic rock relief and sculptures of Hindu deities. They were succeeded by Chola rulers who were prolific in their pursuit of the arts. The Great Living Chola Temples of this period are known for their maturity, grandeur and attention to detail, and have been recognized as a UNESCO Heritage Site.[47] The Chola period is also known for its bronze sculptures, the lost-wax casting technique and fresco paintings. Thanks to the Hindu kings of the Chalukya dynasty, Jainism flourished alongside Islam evidenced by the fourth of the Badami cave temples being Jain instead of Vedic. The kingdoms of South India continued to rule their lands until the Muslim invasions that established sultanates there and destroyed much of the temples and marvel examples of architectures and sculptures

Temples of Khajuraho (c. 800 CE – c. 1000 CE)

Recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site,[48] the Khajuraho group of monuments were constructed by the Chandela clan of the Rajput dynasties. Apart from the usual Hindu temples, 10% of the sculptures depict erotic twisted bodies of men and women that shed light on the everyday socio-cultural and religious practices in Medieval India. Ever since their discovery, the degree of sexuality depicted in these sculptures has drawn both negative and positive criticism from scholars.[49][50][need quotation to verify]

The Khajuraho temples were in active use under Hindu kingdoms, until the establishment of the Delhi Sultanates of the 13th century. Under Muslim rule until the 18th century, many of Khajuraho's monuments were destroyed, but a few ruins still remain.

Deccan

Other Hindu states are now mainly known through their surviving temples and their attached sculpture. These include Badami Chalukya architecture (5th to 6th centuries), Western Chalukya architecture (11th to 12th centuries) and Hoysala architecture (11th to 14th centuries), all centred on modern Karnataka.

Eastern India

In east India, Odisha and West Bengal, Kalinga architecture was the broad temple style, with local variants, before the Muslim conquest.

In antiquity, Bengal was a pioneer of painting in Asia under the Pala Empire. Miniature and scroll painting flourished during the Mughal Empire. Kalighat painting or Kalighat Pat originated in the 19th century Bengal, in the vicinity of Kalighat Kali Temple of Kolkata, and from being items of souvenir taken by the visitors to the Kali temple, the paintings over a period of time developed as a distinct school of Indian painting. From the depiction of Hindu gods other mythological characters, the Kalighat paintings developed to reflect a variety of themes.

Early Modern and Colonial Era (c. 1400 CE – c. 1800 CE)

Mughal art

Although Islamic conquests in India were made as early as the first half of the 10th century, it wasn't until the Mughal Empire that one observes emperors with a patronage for the fine arts. Emperor Humayun, during his reestablishment of the Delhi Sultanate in 1555, brought with him Mir Sayyid Ali and Abd al-Samad, two of the finest painters from Persian Shah Tahmasp's renowned atelier.

During the reign of Akbar (1556–1605), the number of painters grew from around 30 during the creation of the Hamzanama in the mid-1560s, to around 130 by the mid 1590s.[51] According to court historian Abu'l-Fazal, Akbar was hands-on in his interest of the arts, inspecting his painters regularly and rewarding the best.[52] It is during this time that Persian artists were attracted to bringing their unique style to the empire. Indian elements were present in their works from the beginning, with the incorporation of local Indian flora and fauna that were otherwise absent from the traditional Persian style. The paintings of this time reflected the vibrancy and inclusion of Akbar's kingdom, with production of Persian miniatures, the Rajput paintings (including the Kangra school) and the Pahari style of Northern India. They also influenced the Company style watercolor paintings created during the British rule many years later.

With the death of Akbar, his son Jahangir (1605–1627) took the throne. He preferred each painter work on a single piece rather than the collaboration fostered during Akbar's time. This period marks the emergence of distinct individual styles, notably Bishan Das, Manohar Das, Abu al-Hasan, Govardhan, and Daulat.[53] Jahangir himself had the capability to identify the work of each individual artist, even if the work was unnamed. The Razmnama (Persian translation of the Hindu epic Mahabharata) and an illustrated memoir of Jahangir, named Tuzuk-i Jahangiri, were created under his rule. Jahangir was succeeded by Shah Jahan (1628–1658), whose most notable architectural contribution is the Taj Mahal. Paintings under his rule were more formal, featuring court scenes, in contrast to the personal styles from his predecessor's time. Aurangzeb (1658–1707), who held increasingly orthodox Sunni beliefs, forcibly took the throne from his father Shah Jahan. With a ban of music and painting in 1680, his reign saw the decline of Mughal patronage of the arts.

As painting declined in the imperial court, artists and the general influence of Mughal painting spread to the princely courts and cities of north India, where both portraiture, the illustration of the Indian epics, and Hindu religious painting developed in many local schools and styles. Notable among these were the schools of Rajput, Pahari, Deccan, Kangra painting.

Other medieval Indian kingdoms

The last empire in southern India has left spectacular remains of Vijayanagara architecture, especially at Hampi, Karnataka, often heavily decorated with sculpture. These developed the Chola tradition. After the Mughal conquest, the temple tradition continued to develop, mainly in the expansion of existing temples, which added new outer walls with increasingly large gopurams, often dwarfing the older buildings in the centre. These became usually thickly covered with plaster statues of deities and other religious figures, which need have their brightly-coloured paint kept renewed at intervals so they do not erode away.

In South-Central India, during the late fifteenth century after the Middle kingdoms, the Bahmani sultanate disintegrated into the Deccan sultanates centered at Bijapur, Golconda, Ahmadnagar, Bidar, and Berar. They used vedic techniques of metal casting, stone carving, and painting, as well as a distinctive architectural style with the addition of citadels and tombs from Mughal architecture. For instance, the Baridi dynasty (1504–1619) of Bidar saw the invention of bidri ware, which was adopted from Vedic and Maurya period ashoka pillars of zinc mixed with copper, tin, and lead and inlaid with silver or brass, then covered with a mud paste containing sal ammoniac, which turned the base metal black, highlighting the colour and sheen of the inlaid metal. Only after the Mughal conquest of Ahmadnagar in 1600 did the Persian influence patronized by the Turco-Mongol Mughals begin to affect Deccan art.

British period (1841–1947)

British colonial rule had a great impact on Indian art, especially from the mid-19th century onwards. Many old patrons of art became less wealthy and influential, and Western art more ubiquitous as the British Empire established schools of art in major cities. The oldest, the Government College of Fine Arts, Chennai, was established in 1850. In major cities with many Europeans, the Company style of small paintings became common, created by Indian artists working for European patrons of the East India Company. The style mainly used watercolour, to convey soft textures and tones, in a style combining influences from Western prints and Mughal painting.[54] By 1858, the British government took over the task of administration of India under the British Raj. Many commissions by Indian princes were now wholly or partly in Western styles, or the hybrid Indo-Saracenic architecture. The fusion of Indian traditions with European style at this time is evident from Raja Ravi Varma's oil paintings of sari-clad women in a graceful manner.

Bengal School of Art

The Bengal School of Art commonly referred as Bengal School, was an art movement and a style of Indian painting that originated in Bengal, primarily Kolkata and Shantiniketan, and flourished throughout the Indian subcontinent, during the British Raj in the early 20th century. Also known as 'Indian style of painting' in its early days, it was associated with Indian nationalism (swadeshi) and led by Abanindranath Tagore (1871–1951), but was also promoted and supported by British arts administrators like E. B. Havell, the principal of the Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata from 1896; eventually it led to the development of the modern Indian painting.

Tagore later attempted to develop links with Japanese artists as part of an aspiration to construct a pan-Asianist model of art. Through the paintings of 'Bharat Mata', Abanindranath established the pattern of patriotism. Painters and artists of Bengal school were Nandalal Bose, M.A.R Chughtai, Sunayani Devi (sister of Abanindranath Tagore), Manishi Dey, Mukul Dey, Kalipada Ghoshal, Asit Kumar Haldar, Sudhir Khastgir, Kshitindranath Majumdar, Sughra Rababi.

Between 1920 and 1925, Gaganendranath pioneered experiments in modernist painting. Partha Mitter describes him as "the only Indian painter before the 1940s who made use of the language and syntax of Cubism in his painting". From 1925 onwards, the artist developed a complex post-cubist style.

With the Swadeshi Movement gaining momentum by 1905, Indian artists attempted to resuscitate the cultural identities suppressed by the British, rejecting the Romanticized style of the Company paintings and the mannered work of Raja Ravi Varma and his followers. Thus was created what is known today as the Bengal School of Art, led by the reworked Asian styles (with an emphasis on Indian nationalism) of Abanindranath Tagore (1871–1951), who has been referred to as the father of Modern Indian art.[55] Other artists of the Tagore family, such as Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) and Gaganendranath Tagore (1867–1938) as well as new artists of the early 20th century such as Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–1941) were responsible for introducing Avant-garde western styles into Indian Art. Many other artists like Jamini Roy and later S.H. Raza took inspiration from folk traditions. In 1944, K.C.S. Paniker founded the Progressive Painters' Association (PPA) thus giving rise to the "madras movement" in art.[56]

Contemporary art (c. 1900 CE-present)

In 1947, India became independent of British rule. A group of six artists – K. H. Ara, S. K. Bakre, H. A. Gade, M.F. Husain, S.H. Raza and Francis Newton Souza – founded the Bombay Progressive Artists' Group in the year 1952, to establish new ways of expressing India in the post-colonial era. Though the group was dissolved in 1956, it was profoundly influential in changing the idiom of Indian art. Almost all India's major artists in the 1950s were associated with the group. Some of those who are well-known today are Bal Chabda, Manishi Dey, V. S. Gaitonde, Krishen Khanna, Ram Kumar, Tyeb Mehta, K. G. Subramanyan, A. Ramachandran, Devender Singh, Akbar Padamsee, John Wilkins, Himmat Shah and Manjit Bawa.[57] Present-day Indian art is varied as it had been never before. Among the best-known artists of the newer generation include Bose Krishnamachari and Bikash Bhattacharjee.

Painting and sculpture remained important in the later half of the twentieth century, though in the work of leading artists such as Nalini Malani, Subodh Gupta, Narayanan Ramachandran, Vivan Sundaram, Jitish Kallat, GR Iranna, Bharati Kher, Chittravanu Muzumdar, they often found radical new directions. Bharti Dayal has chosen to handle the traditional Mithila painting in most contemporary way and created her own style through the exercises of her own imagination, they appear fresh and unusual.

The increase in discourse about Indian art, in English as well as vernacular Indian languages, changed the way art was perceived in the art schools. Critical approach became rigorous; critics like Geeta Kapur, R. Siva Kumar,[58][59] Shivaji K. Panikkar, Ranjit Hoskote, amongst others, contributed to re-thinking contemporary art practice in India.

Material history of Indian art

Sculpture

 
Chola bronze of Shiva as Nataraja ("Lord of Dance"), Tamil Nadu, 10th or 11th century.

The first known sculpture in the Indian subcontinent is from the Indus Valley civilisation (3300–1700 BC), found in sites at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa in modern-day Pakistan. These include the famous small bronze male dancerNataraja. However such figures in bronze and stone are rare and greatly outnumbered by pottery figurines and stone seals, often of animals or deities very finely depicted. After the collapse of the Indus Valley civilization there is little record of sculpture until the Buddhist era, apart from a hoard of copper figures of (somewhat controversially) c. 1500 BCE from Daimabad.[60] Thus the great tradition of Indian monumental sculpture in stone appears to begin relatively late, with the reign of Ashoka from 270 to 232 BCE, and the Pillars of Ashoka he erected around India, carrying his edicts and topped by famous sculptures of animals, mostly lions, of which six survive.[61] Large amounts of figurative sculpture, mostly in relief, survive from Early Buddhist pilgrimage stupas, above all Sanchi; these probably developed out of a tradition using wood.[62] Indeed, wood continued to be the main sculptural and architectural medium in Kerala throughout all historic periods until recent decades.[63]

During the 2nd to 1st century BCE in far northern India, in the Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara from what is now southern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, sculptures became more explicit, representing episodes of the Buddha's life and teachings. Although India had a long sculptural tradition and a mastery of rich iconography, the Buddha was never represented in human form before this time, but only through some of his symbols. This may be because Gandharan Buddhist sculpture in modern Afghanistan displays Greek and Persian artistic influence. Artistically, the Gandharan school of sculpture is said to have contributed wavy hair, drapery covering both shoulders, shoes and sandals, acanthus leaf decorations, etc.

The pink sandstone Hindu, Jain and Buddhist sculptures of Mathura from the 1st to 3rd centuries CE reflected both native Indian traditions and the Western influences received through the Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara, and effectively established the basis for subsequent Indian religious sculpture.[62] The style was developed and diffused through most of India under the Gupta Empire (c. 320-550) which remains a "classical" period for Indian sculpture, covering the earlier Ellora Caves,[64] though the Elephanta Caves are probably slightly later.[65] Later large scale sculpture remains almost exclusively religious, and generally rather conservative, often reverting to simple frontal standing poses for deities, though the attendant spirits such as apsaras and yakshi often have sensuously curving poses. Carving is often highly detailed, with an intricate backing behind the main figure in high relief. The celebrated lost wax bronzes of the Chola dynasty (c. 850–1250) from south India, many designed to be carried in processions, include the iconic form of Shiva as Nataraja,[66] with the massive granite carvings of Mahabalipuram dating from the previous Pallava dynasty.[67] The Chola period is also remarkable for its sculptures and bronzes.[68] Among the existing specimens in the various museums of the world and in the temples of South India may be seen many fine figures of Siva in various forms, Vishnu and his wife Lakshmi, Siva saints and many more.[69]

Wall painting

 
Fresco from the Ajanta Caves, c. 450-500

The tradition and methods of Indian cliff painting gradually evolved throughout many thousands of years – there are multiple locations found with prehistoric art. The early caves included overhanging rock decorated with rock-cut art and the use of natural caves during the Mesolithic period (6000 BCE). Their use has continued in some areas into historic times.[70] The Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka are on the edge of the Deccan Plateau where deep erosion has left huge sandstone outcrops. The many caves and grottos found there contain primitive tools and decorative rock paintings that reflect the ancient tradition of human interaction with their landscape, an interaction that continues to this day.[71]

The oldest surviving frescoes of the historical period have been preserved in the Ajanta Caves with Cave 10 having some from the 1st century CE, though the larger and more famous groups are from the 5th century. Despite climatic conditions that tend to work against the survival of older paintings, in total there are known more than 20 locations in India with paintings and traces of former paintings of ancient and early medieval times (up to the 8th to 10th centuries CE),[72] although these are just a tiny fraction of what would have once existed. The most significant frescoes of the ancient and early medieval period are found in the Ajanta, Bagh, Ellora, and Sittanavasal caves, the last being Jain of the 7th-10th centuries. Although many show evidence of being by artists mainly used to decorating palaces, no early secular wall-paintings survive.[73]

The Chola fresco paintings were discovered in 1931 within the circumambulatory passage of the Brihadisvara Temple at Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, and are the first Chola specimens discovered. Researchers have discovered the technique used in these frescoes. A smooth batter of limestone mixture is applied over the stones, which took two to three days to set. Within that short span, such large paintings were painted with natural organic pigments. During the Nayak period the Chola paintings were painted over. The Chola frescoes lying underneath have an ardent spirit of saivism is expressed in them. They probably synchronised with the completion of the temple by Rajaraja Cholan the Great.

Kerala mural painting has well-preserved fresco or mural or wall painting in temple walls in Pundarikapuram, Ettumanoor and Aymanam and elsewhere.

Miniature painting

 
Akbar riding the elephant Hawa'I pursuing another elephant

Although few Indian miniatures survive from before about 1000 CE, and some from the next few centuries, there was probably a considerable tradition. Those that survive are initially illustrations for Buddhist texts, later followed by Jain and Hindu equivalents, and the decline of Buddhist as well as the vulnerable support material of the palm-leaf manuscript probably explain the rarity of early examples.[74]

Mughal painting in miniatures on paper developed very quickly in the late 16th century from the combined influence of the existing miniature tradition and artists trained in the Persian miniature tradition imported by the Mughal Emperor's court. New ingredients in the style were much greater realism, especially in portraits, and an interest in animals, plants and other aspects of the physical world.[75] Deccan painting developed around the same time in the Deccan sultanates courts to the south, in some ways more vital, if less poised and elegant.[76]

Miniatures either illustrated books or were single works for muraqqas or albums of painting and Islamic calligraphy. The style gradually spread in the next two centuries to influence painting on paper in both Muslim and Hindu princely courts, developing into a number of regional styles often called "sub-Mughal", including Rajput painting, Pahari painting, and finally Company painting, a hybrid watercolour style influenced by European art and largely patronized by the people of the British raj. In "pahari" ("mountain") centres like that of Kangra painting the style remained vital and continued to develop into the early decades of the 19th century.[77] From the mid-19th century Western-style easel paintings became increasingly painted by Indian artists trained in Government art schools.

Jewellery

 
Pair of gold earrings, 1st century BCE, Andhra Pradesh.

The Indian subcontinent has the longest continuous legacy of jewellery-making, with a history of over 5,000 years.[78] Using jewellery as a store of capital remains more common in India than in most modern societies, and gold appears always to have been strongly preferred for the metal. India and the surrounding areas were important sources of high-quality gemstones, and the jewellery of the ruling class is typified by using them lavishly. One of the first to start jewellery-making were the people of the Indus Valley civilization. Early remains are few, as they were not buried with their owners.

Other materials

Wood was undoubtedly extremely important, but rarely survives long in the Indian climate. Organic animal materials such as ivory or bone were discouraged by the Dharmic religions, although Buddhist examples exist, such as the Begram ivories, many of Indian manufacture, but found in Afghanistan, and some relatively modern carved tusks. In Muslim settings they are more common.

Contextual history of Indian art

Temple art

Obscurity shrouds the period between the decline of the Harappans and the definite historic period starting with the Mauryas, and in the historical period, the earliest Indian religion to inspire major artistic monuments was Buddhism. Though there may have been earlier structures in wood that have been transformed into stone structures, there are no physical evidences for these except textual references. Soon after the Buddhists initiated rock-cut caves, Hindus and Jains started to imitate them at Badami, Aihole, Ellora, Salsette, Elephanta, Aurangabad and Mamallapuram and Mughals. It appears to be a constant in Indian art that the different religions shared a very similar artistic style at any particular period and place, though naturally adapting the iconography to match the religion commissioning them.[79] Probably the same groups of artists worked for the different religions regardless of their own affiliations.

 
Indian art also found its way into Italy, within the context of Indo-Roman trade: in 1938 the Pompeii Lakshmi was found in the ruins of Pompeii (destroyed in an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE).

Buddhist art first developed during the Gandhara period and Amaravati periods around the 1st century BCE. It flourished greatly during the Gupta Periods and Pala periods that comprise the Golden Age of India. Although the most glorious art of these Indian empires was mostly Buddhist in nature, subsequently Hindu Empires like the Pallava, Chola, Hoysala and Vijayanagara Empires developed their own styles of Hindu art as well.

There is no time line that divides the creation of rock-cut temples and free-standing temples built with cut stone as they developed in parallel. The building of free-standing structures began in the 5th century, while rock-cut temples continued to be excavated until the 12th century. An example of a free-standing structural temple is the Shore Temple, a part of the Mahabalipuram World Heritage Site, with its slender tower, built on the shore of the Bay of Bengal with finely carved granite rocks cut like bricks and dating from the 8th century.[80][81]

Folk and tribal art

 
Warli painting from Maharastra

Folk and tribal art in India takes on different manifestations through varied media such as pottery, painting, metalwork,[82] paper-art, weaving and designing of objects such as jewellery and toys. These are not just aesthetic objects but in fact have an important significance in people's lives and are tied to their beliefs and rituals. The objects can range from sculpture, masks (used in rituals and ceremonies), paintings, textiles, baskets, kitchen objects, arms and weapons, and the human body itself (tattoos and piercings). There is a deep symbolic meaning that is attached to not only the objects themselves but also the materials and techniques used to produce them.

Often puranic gods and legends are transformed into contemporary forms and familiar images. Fairs, festivals, local heroes (mostly warriors) and local deities play a vital role in these arts (Example: Nakashi art from Telangana or Cherial Scroll Painting).

Folk art also includes the visual expressions of the wandering nomads. This is the art of people who are exposed to changing landscapes as they travel over the valleys and highlands of India. They carry with them the experiences and memories of different spaces and their art consists of the transient and dynamic pattern of life. The rural, tribal and arts of the nomads constitute the matrix of folk expression. Examples of folk arts are Warli, Madhubani Art, Manjusha Art, Tikuli Art, Gond art and Bhil art etc.

While most tribes and traditional folk artist communities are assimilated into the familiar kind of civilised life, they still continue to practice their art. Unfortunately though, market and economic forces have ensured that the numbers of these artists are dwindling.[83][84] A lot of effort is being made by various NGOs and the Government of India to preserve and protect these arts and to promote them. Several scholars in India and across the world have studied these arts and some valuable scholarship is available on them.

The folk spirit has a tremendous role to play in the development of art and in the overall consciousness of indigenous cultures.

Contextual Modernism

The year 1997 bore witness to two parallel gestures of canon formation. On the one hand, the influential Baroda Group, a coalition whose original members included Vivan Sundaram, Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh, Bhupen Khakhar, and Nalini Malani—and which had left its mark on history in the form of the 1981 exhibition “Place for People”—was definitively historicized in 1997 with the publication of Contemporary Art in Baroda, an anthology of essays edited by Sheikh. On the other hand, the art historian R. Siva Kumar's benchmark exhibition and related publication, A Contextual Modernism, restored the Santiniketan artists—Rabindranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose, Benode Behari Mukherjee, and Ramkinkar Baij—to their proper place as the originators of an indigenously achieved yet transcultural modernism in the 1930s, well before the Progressives composed their manifesto in the late 1940s. Of the Santiniketan artists, Siva Kumar observed that they “reviewed traditional antecedents in relation to the new avenues opened up by cross-cultural contacts. They also saw it as a historical imperative. Cultural insularity, they realized, had to give way to eclecticism and cultural impurity.”[85]

 
The Kala Bhavana (Institute of Fine Arts), Santiniketan. It boasts an extremely well-known faculty and student body. It is most famous for the spread of Bengal School of Art.

The idea of Contextual Modernism emerged in 1997 from R. Siva Kumar's Santiniketan: The Making of a Contextual Modernism as a postcolonial critical tool in the understanding of an alternative modernism in the visual arts of the erstwhile colonies like India, specifically that of the Santiniketan artists.

Several terms including Paul Gilroy's counter culture of modernity and Tani Barlow's Colonial modernity have been used to describe the kind of alternative modernity that emerged in non-European contexts. Professor Gall argues that 'Contextual Modernism' is a more suited term because “the colonial in colonial modernity does not accommodate the refusal of many in colonized situations to internalize inferiority. Santiniketan's artist teachers' refusal of subordination incorporated a counter vision of modernity, which sought to correct the racial and cultural essentialism that drove and characterized imperial Western modernity and modernism. Those European modernities, projected through a triumphant British colonial power, provoked nationalist responses, equally problematic when they incorporated similar essentialisms.”[86]

According to R. Siva Kumar "The Santiniketan artists were one of the first who consciously challenged this idea of modernism by opting out of both internationalist modernism and historicist indigenousness and tried to create a context sensitive modernism."[87] He had been studying the work of the Santiniketan masters and thinking about their approach to art since the early 80s. The practice of subsuming Nandalal Bose, Rabindranath Tagore, Ram Kinker Baij and Benode Behari Mukherjee under the Bengal School of Art was, according to Siva Kumar, misleading. This happened because early writers were guided by genealogies of apprenticeship rather than their styles, worldviews, and perspectives on art practice.[87]

Contextual Modernism in the recent past has found its usage in other related fields of studies, specially in Architecture.[88]

Art museums of India

Major cities

Archaeological museums

Modern art museums

Other museums

See also

Other Indian Art and Architecture forms

Notes

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References

  • Harle, J.C., The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent, 2nd edn. 1994, Yale University Press Pelican History of Art, ISBN 0300062176
  • Harsha V. Dehejia, The Advaita of Art (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2000, ISBN 81-208-1389-8), p. 97
  • Kapila Vatsyayan, Classical Indian Dance in Literature and the Arts (New Delhi: Sangeet Natak Akademi, 1977), p. 8
  • Mitter, Partha. Indian Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-19-284221-8)

Further reading

  • Gupta, S. P., & Asthana, S. P. (2007). Elements of Indian art: Including temple architecture, iconography & iconometry. New Delhi: Indraprastha Museum of Art and Archaeology.
  • Gupta, S. P., & Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute. (2011). The roots of Indian art: A detailed study of the formative period of Indian art and architecture, third and second centuries B.C., Mauryan and late Mauryan. Delhi: B.R. Publishing Corporation.
  • Abanindranath Tagore (1914). Some Notes on Indian Artistic Anatomy. Indian Society of Oriental Art, Calcutta. OL 6213535M.
  • Kossak, Steven (1997). Indian court painting, 16th-19th century.. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 978-0-87099-783-9. (see index: pages 148-152)
  • Lerner, Martin (1984). The flame and the lotus: Indian and Southeast Asian art from the Kronos collections. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 978-0-87099-374-9. fully online
  • Smith, Vincent A. (1930). A History Of Fine Art In India And Ceylon. The Clarendon Press, Oxford.
  • Welch, Stuart Cary (1985). India: art and culture, 1300–1900. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 978-0-944142-13-4. fully online


indian, consists, variety, forms, including, painting, sculpture, pottery, textile, arts, such, woven, silk, geographically, spans, entire, indian, subcontinent, including, what, india, pakistan, bangladesh, lanka, nepal, times, eastern, afghanistan, strong, s. Indian art consists of a variety of art forms including painting sculpture pottery and textile arts such as woven silk Geographically it spans the entire Indian subcontinent including what is now India Pakistan Bangladesh Sri Lanka Nepal and at times eastern Afghanistan A strong sense of design is characteristic of Indian art and can be observed in its modern and traditional forms Indian artSarnath Lion Capital of Ashoka circa 250 BCE Sarnath Museum near Varanasi India The origin of Indian art can be traced to prehistoric settlements in the 3rd millennium BCE On its way to modern times Indian art has had cultural influences as well as religious influences such as Hinduism Buddhism Jainism Sikhism and Islam In spite of this complex mixture of religious traditions generally the prevailing artistic style at any time and place has been shared by the major religious groups In historic art sculpture in stone and metal mainly religious has survived the Indian climate better than other media and provides most of the best remains Many of the most important ancient finds that are not in carved stone come from the surrounding drier regions rather than India itself Indian funeral and philosophic traditions exclude grave goods which is the main source of ancient art in other cultures Indian artist styles historically followed Indian religions out of the subcontinent having an especially large influence in Tibet South East Asia and China Indian art has itself received influences at times especially from Central Asia and Iran and Europe Contents 1 Early Indian art 1 1 Rock art 1 2 Indus Valley civilisation c 3300 BC c 1750 BC 1 3 Vedic period 1 4 Mauryan art c 322 BCE c 185 BCE 1 5 Colossal Yaksha statuary 2nd century BCE 1 6 Buddhist art c 150 BCE c 500 CE 1 6 1 Shunga Dynasty c 185 BCE 72 BCE 1 6 2 Satavahana dynasty c 1st 3rd century BCE c 3rd century CE 1 6 3 Kushan Empire c 30 CE c 375 CE 1 7 Gupta art c 320 CE c 550 CE 2 Middle kingdoms and the Late Medieval period c 600 CE c 1300 CE 2 1 Dynasties of South India c 3rd century CE c 1300 CE 2 2 Temples of Khajuraho c 800 CE c 1000 CE 2 3 Deccan 2 4 Eastern India 3 Early Modern and Colonial Era c 1400 CE c 1800 CE 3 1 Mughal art 3 2 Other medieval Indian kingdoms 3 3 British period 1841 1947 3 3 1 Bengal School of Art 4 Contemporary art c 1900 CE present 5 Material history of Indian art 5 1 Sculpture 5 2 Wall painting 5 3 Miniature painting 5 4 Jewellery 5 5 Other materials 6 Contextual history of Indian art 6 1 Temple art 6 2 Folk and tribal art 6 3 Contextual Modernism 7 Art museums of India 7 1 Major cities 7 2 Archaeological museums 7 3 Modern art museums 7 4 Other museums 8 See also 9 Notes 10 References 11 Further readingEarly Indian art EditRock art Edit Rock painting at one of the Bhimbetka rock shelters Prehistoric petroglyphs in the Edakkal Caves Wayanad Main article Cave paintings in India Rock art of India includes rock relief carvings engravings and paintings some but by no means all from the South Asian Stone Age It is estimated there are about 1300 rock art sites with over a quarter of a million figures and figurines 1 The earliest rock carvings in India were discovered by Archibald Carlleyle twelve years before the Cave of Altamira in Spain 2 although his work only came to light much later via J Cockburn 1899 3 Dr V S Wakankar discovered several painted rock shelters in Central India situated around the Vindhya mountain range Of these the c 750 sites making up the Bhimbetka rock shelters have been enrolled as a UNESCO World Heritage Site the earliest paintings are some 10 000 years old 4 5 6 7 8 The paintings in these sites commonly depicted scenes of human life alongside animals and hunts with stone implements Their style varied with region and age but the most common characteristic was a red wash made using a powdered mineral called geru which is a form of Iron Oxide Hematite 9 Indus Valley civilisation c 3300 BC c 1750 BC Edit The Dancing Girl of Mohenjo daro Main article Indus Valley civilisation Despite its widespread and sophistication the Indus Valley civilisation seems to have taken no interest in public large scale art unlike many other early civilizations A number of gold terracotta and stone figurines of girls in dancing poses reveal the presence of some forms of dance Additionally the terracotta figurines included cows bears monkeys and dogs Much the most common form of figurative art found is small carved seals Thousands of steatite seals have been recovered and their physical character is fairly consistent In size they range from 3 4 inch to 11 2 inches square In most cases they have a pierced boss at the back to accommodate a cord for handling or for use as personal adornment Seals have been found at Mohenjo Daro depicting a figure standing on its head and another on the Pashupati Seal sitting cross legged in a yoga like pose This figure has been variously identified Sir John Marshall identified a resemblance to the Hindu god Shiva 10 The animal depicted on a majority of seals at sites of the mature period has not been clearly identified Part bull part zebra with a majestic horn it has been a source of speculation As yet there is insufficient evidence to substantiate claims that the image had religious or cultist significance but the prevalence of the image raises the question of whether or not the animals in images of the IVC are religious symbols 11 The most famous piece is the bronze Dancing Girl of Mohenjo Daro which shows remarkably advanced modelling of the human figure for this early date 12 After the end of the Indus Valley Civilization there is a surprising absence of art of any great degree of sophistication until the Buddhist era It is thought that this partly reflects the use of perishable organic materials such as wood 13 Vedic period Edit Symbolic possibly anthropomorphological artefact Copper Hoard culture 2nd millennium BCE Mathura Museum Main article Vedic period The millennium following the collapse of the Indus Valley civilisation coinciding with the Indo Aryan migration during the Vedic period is devoid of anthropomorphical depictions 14 It has been suggested that the early Vedic religion focused exclusively on the worship of purely elementary forces of nature by means of elaborate sacrifices which did not lend themselves easily to anthropomorphological representations 15 16 Various artefacts may belong to the Copper Hoard culture 2nd millennium BCE some of them suggesting anthropomorphological characteristics 17 Interpretations vary as to the exact signification of these artifacts or even the culture and the periodization to which they belonged 17 Some examples of artistic expression also appear in abstract pottery designs during the Black and red ware culture 1450 1200 BCE or the Painted Grey Ware culture 1200 600 BCE with finds in a wide area including the area of Mathura 17 After a gap of about a thousand years most of the early finds correspond to what is called the second period of urbanization in the middle of the 1st millennium BCE 17 The anthropomorphic depiction of various deities apparently started in the middle of the 1st millennium BCE possibly as a consequence of the influx of foreign stimuli initiated with the Achaemenid conquest of the Indus Valley and the rise of alternative local faiths challenging Vedism such as Buddhism Jainism and local popular cults 14 Mauryan art c 322 BCE c 185 BCE Edit Main article Mauryan art The Pataliputra capital an early example of Mauryan stone sculpture displaying Persian and Hellenistic influences 3rd century BCE Patna Museum The north Indian Maurya Empire flourished from 322 BCE to 185 BCE and at its maximum extent controlled all of the sub continent except the extreme south as well as influences from Indian ancient traditions and Ancient Persia 18 as shown by the Pataliputra capital The emperor Ashoka who died in 232 BCE adopted Buddhism about half way through his 40 year reign and patronized several large stupas at key sites from the life of the Buddha although very little decoration from the Mauryan period survives and there may not have been much in the first place There is more from various early sites of Indian rock cut architecture The most famous survivals are the large animals surmounting several of the Pillars of Ashoka which showed a confident and boldly mature style and craft and first of its kind iron casting without rust until date which was in use by vedic people in rural areas of the country though we have very few remains showing its development 19 The famous detached Lion Capital of Ashoka with four animals was adopted as the official Emblem of India after Indian independence 20 Mauryan sculpture and architecture is characterized by a very fine Mauryan polish given to the stone which is rarely found in later periods Many small popular terracotta figurines are recovered in archaeology in a range of often vigorous if somewhat crude styles Both animals and human figures usually females presumed to be deities are found 21 Colossal Yaksha statuary 2nd century BCE Edit Mudgarpani Yaksha circa 100 BCE 22 Art of Mathura Mathura Museum Yakshas seem to have been the object of an important cult in the early periods of Indian history many of them being known such as Kubera king of the Yakshas Manibhadra or Mudgarpani 23 The Yakshas are a broad class of nature spirits usually benevolent but sometimes mischievous or capricious connected with water fertility trees the forest treasure and wilderness 24 25 and were the object of popular worship 26 Many of them were later incorporated into Buddhism Jainism or Hinduism 23 In the 2nd century BCE Yakshas became the focus of the creation of colossal cultic images typically around 2 meters or more in height which are considered as probably the first Indian anthropomorphic productions in stone 27 23 Although few ancient Yaksha statues remain in good condition the vigor of the style has been applauded and expresses essentially Indian qualities 27 They are often pot bellied two armed and fierce looking 23 The Yakshas are often depicted with weapons or attributes such as the Yaksha Mudgarpani who in the right hand holds a mudgar mace and in the left hand the figure of a small standing devotee or child joining hands in prayer 28 23 It is often suggested that the style of the colossal Yaksha statuary had an important influence on the creation of later divine images and human figures in India 29 The female equivalent of the Yakshas were the Yakshinis often associated with trees and children and whose voluptuous figures became omnipresent in Indian art 23 Some Hellenistic influence such as the geometrical folds of the drapery or the walking stance of the statues has been suggested 27 According to John Boardman the hem of the dress in the monumental early Yaksha statues is derived from Greek art 27 Describing the drapery of one of these statues John Boardman writes It has no local antecedents and looks most like a Greek Late Archaic mannerism and suggests it is possibly derived from the Hellenistic art of nearby Bactria where this design is known 27 In the production of colossal Yaksha statues carved in the round which can be found in several locations in northern India the art of Mathura is considered as the most advanced in quality and quantity during this period 30 Buddhist art c 150 BCE c 500 CE Edit See also Greco Buddhist art and Mathura art Crossbar medallion with elephant and riders Mathura art circa 150 BCE 31 The major survivals of Buddhist art begin in the period after the Mauryans from which good quantities of sculpture survives Some key sites are Sanchi Bharhut and Amaravati some of which remain in situ with others in museums in India or around the world Stupas were surrounded by ceremonial fences with four profusely carved toranas or ornamental gateways facing the cardinal directions These are in stone though clearly adopting forms developed in wood They and the walls of the stupa itself can be heavily decorated with reliefs mostly illustrating the lives of the Buddha Gradually life size figures were sculpted initially in deep relief but then free standing 32 Mathura was the most important centre in this development which applied to Hindu and Jain art as well as Buddhist 33 The facades and interiors of rock cut chaitya prayer halls and monastic viharas have survived better than similar free standing structures elsewhere which were for long mostly in wood The caves at Ajanta Karle Bhaja and elsewhere contain early sculpture often outnumbered by later works such as iconic figures of the Buddha and bodhisattvas which are not found before 100 CE at the least Buddhism developed an increasing emphasis on statues of the Buddha which was greatly influenced by Hindu and Jain religious figurative art The figures of this period which were also influenced by the Greco Buddhist art of the centuries after the conquests of Alexander the Great This fusion developed in the far north west of India especially Gandhara in modern Afghanistan and Pakistan 34 The Indian Kushan Empire spread from Central Asia to include northern India in the early centuries CE and briefly commissioned large statues that were portraits of the royal dynasty 35 Shunga Dynasty c 185 BCE 72 BCE Edit Main article Shunga Empire The Great Stupa at Sanchi c 273 BCE 232 BCE Mauryan Empire enlarged c 150 BCE 50 BCE Shunga Dynasty With the fall of the Maurya Empire control of India was returned to the older custom of regional dynasties one of the most significant of which was the Shunga Dynasty c 185 BCE 72 BCE of central India During this period as well as during the Satavahana Dynasty which occurred concurrently with the Shunga Dynasty in south India some of the most significant early Buddhist architecture was created Arguably the most significant architecture of this dynasty is the stupa a religious monument which usually holds a sacred relic of Buddhism These relics were often but not always in some way directly connected to the Buddha Due to the fact that these stupas contained remains of the Buddha himself each stupa was venerated as being an extension of the Buddha s body his enlightenment and of his achievement of nirvana The way in which Buddhists venerate the stupa is by walking around it in a clockwise manner 36 A monumental rock cut cave the Great Chaitya at Karla Caves built circa 120 CE One of the most notable examples of the Buddhist stupa from the Shunga Dynasty is The Great Stupa at Sanchi which was thought to be founded by the Mauryan emperor Ashoka c 273 BCE 232 BCE during the Maurya Empire 37 The Great Stupa was enlarged to its present diameter of 120 feet covered with a stone casing topped with a balcony and umbrella and encircled with a stone railing during the Shunga Dynasty c 150 BCE 50 BCE In addition to architecture another significant art form of the Shunga Dynasty is the elaborately moulded terracotta plaques As seen in previous examples from the Mauryan Empire a style in which surface detail nudity and sensuality is continued in the terracotta plaques of the Shunga Dynasty The most common figural representations seen on these plaques are women some of which are thought to be goddesses who are mostly shown as bare chested and wearing elaborate headdresses 38 Satavahana dynasty c 1st 3rd century BCE c 3rd century CE Edit Main article Satavahana dynasty The Satavahana dynasty ruled in central India and sponsored many large Buddhist monuments stupas temples and prayer halls including the Amaravati Stupa the Karla Caves and the first phase of the Ajanta Caves 39 Bimbisara with his royal cortege issuing from the city of Rajagriha to visit the Buddha Stupas are religious monuments built on burial mounds which contain relics beneath a solid dome Stupas in different areas of India may vary in structure size and design however their representational meanings are quite similar They are designed based on a mandala a graph of cosmos specific to Buddhism A traditional stupa has a railing that provides a sacred path for Buddhist followers to practice devotional circumambulation in ritual settings Also ancient Indians considered caves as sacred places since they were inhabited by holy men and monks A chaitya was constructed from a cave 36 Relief sculptures of Buddhist figures and epigraphs written in Brahmi characters are often found in divine places specific to Buddhism 40 To celebrate the divine Satavahana people also made stone images as the decoration in Buddhist architectures Based on the knowledge of geometry and geology they created ideal images using a set of complex techniques and tools such as chisels hammers and compasses with iron points 41 In addition delicate Satavahana coins show the capacity of creating art in that period The Satavahanas issued coins primarily in copper lead and potin Later on silver came into use when producing coins The coins usually have detailed portraits of rulers and inscriptions written in the language of Tamil and Telugu 40 Kushan Empire c 30 CE c 375 CE Edit Main article Kushan art Officially established by Kujula Kadphises the first Kushan emperor who united the Yuezhi tribes the Kushan empire was a syncretic empire in central and southern Asia including the regions of Gandhara and Mathura in northern India From 127 to 151 CE Gandharan reached its peak under the reign of Kanishka the Great In this period Kushan art inherited the Greco Buddhist art 42 Mahayana Buddhism flourished and the depictions of Buddha as a human form first appeared in art Wearing a monk s robe and a long length of cloth draped over the left shoulder and around the body the Buddha was depicted with 32 major lakshanas distinguishing marks including a golden colored body an ushnisha a protuberance on the top of his head heavy earrings elongated earlobes long arms the impression of a chakra wheel on the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet and the urna a mark between his eyebrows 36 One of the hallmarks of Gandharan art is its relation to naturalism of Hellenistic art The naturalistic features found in Gandharan sculptures include the three dimensional treatment of the drapery with unregularized folds that are in realistic patterns of random shape and thickness The physical form of the Buddha and his bodhisattvas are well defined solid and muscular with swelling chests arms and abdomens 43 Buddhism and Buddhism art spread to Central Asia and the far East across Bactria and Sogdia where the Kushan Empire met the Han Dynasty of China 44 Gupta art c 320 CE c 550 CE Edit Main article Gupta art The Gupta period is generally regarded as a classic peak of north Indian art for all the major religious groups Although painting was evidently widespread and survives in the Ajanta Caves the surviving works are almost all religious sculpture The period saw the emergence of the iconic carved stone deity in Hindu art as well as the Buddha figure and Jain tirthankara figures these last often on a very large scale The main centres of sculpture were Mathura Sarnath and Gandhara the last the centre of Greco Buddhist art The Gupta period marked the golden age of classical Hinduism 45 and saw the earliest constructed Hindu temple architecture though survivals are not numerous Gupta art during the Golden Age of India Seated Buddha 5th century CE Sarnath Museum Mahishasuramardini Dashavatara Temple Krishna killing the horse demon Keshi c 5th century CE Metropolitan Museum of Art Iron Pillar of Delhi known for its rust resistant composition of metals c 3rd 4th century CE Ajanta Caves FrescoMiddle kingdoms and the Late Medieval period c 600 CE c 1300 CE EditOver this period Hindu temple architecture matured into a number of regional styles and a large proportion of the art historical record for this period consists of temple sculpture much of which remains in place The political history of the middle kingdoms of India saw India divided into many states and since much of the grandest building was commissioned by rulers and their court this helped the development of regional differences Painting both on a large scale on walls and in miniature forms was no doubt very widely practiced but survivals are rare Medieval bronzes have most commonly survived from either the Tamil south or the Himalayan foothills Dynasties of South India c 3rd century CE c 1300 CE Edit Further information Pallava art and architecture and Chola art and architecture Inscriptions on the Pillars of Ashoka mention coexistence of the northern kingdoms with the triumvirate of Chola Chera and Pandya Tamil dynasties situated south of the Vindhya mountains 46 The medieval period witnessed the rise and fall of these kingdoms in conjunction with other kingdoms in the area It is during the decline and resurgence of these kingdoms that Hinduism was renewed It fostered the construction of numerous temples and sculptures Cave 3 at the Badami cave temples Early Chalukya dynasty c 6th century CE Shore Temple of Mamallapuram Pallava dynasty 700 728 CE Youth in lotus pond ceiling fresco at Sittanvasal 850 CE Chola bronze sculpture of Shiva as Nataraja the Lord of DanceThe Shore Temple at Mamallapuram constructed by the Pallavas symbolizes early Hindu architecture with its monolithic rock relief and sculptures of Hindu deities They were succeeded by Chola rulers who were prolific in their pursuit of the arts The Great Living Chola Temples of this period are known for their maturity grandeur and attention to detail and have been recognized as a UNESCO Heritage Site 47 The Chola period is also known for its bronze sculptures the lost wax casting technique and fresco paintings Thanks to the Hindu kings of the Chalukya dynasty Jainism flourished alongside Islam evidenced by the fourth of the Badami cave temples being Jain instead of Vedic The kingdoms of South India continued to rule their lands until the Muslim invasions that established sultanates there and destroyed much of the temples and marvel examples of architectures and sculptures Temples of Khajuraho c 800 CE c 1000 CE Edit Main article Khajuraho Group of Monuments Arts and sculpture Vishvanatha Temple part of the Khajuraho group of monuments Recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site 48 the Khajuraho group of monuments were constructed by the Chandela clan of the Rajput dynasties Apart from the usual Hindu temples 10 of the sculptures depict erotic twisted bodies of men and women that shed light on the everyday socio cultural and religious practices in Medieval India Ever since their discovery the degree of sexuality depicted in these sculptures has drawn both negative and positive criticism from scholars 49 50 need quotation to verify The Khajuraho temples were in active use under Hindu kingdoms until the establishment of the Delhi Sultanates of the 13th century Under Muslim rule until the 18th century many of Khajuraho s monuments were destroyed but a few ruins still remain Deccan Edit Other Hindu states are now mainly known through their surviving temples and their attached sculpture These include Badami Chalukya architecture 5th to 6th centuries Western Chalukya architecture 11th to 12th centuries and Hoysala architecture 11th to 14th centuries all centred on modern Karnataka Eastern India Edit In east India Odisha and West Bengal Kalinga architecture was the broad temple style with local variants before the Muslim conquest In antiquity Bengal was a pioneer of painting in Asia under the Pala Empire Miniature and scroll painting flourished during the Mughal Empire Kalighat painting or Kalighat Pat originated in the 19th century Bengal in the vicinity of Kalighat Kali Temple of Kolkata and from being items of souvenir taken by the visitors to the Kali temple the paintings over a period of time developed as a distinct school of Indian painting From the depiction of Hindu gods other mythological characters the Kalighat paintings developed to reflect a variety of themes Rasmancha Bishnupur Built by King Bir Hambir the temple has an unusual elongated pyramidical tower surrounded by hut shaped turrets which were very typical of Bengali roof structures of the time Terracotta work on Shyamrai Temple Bishnupur depicting Raas Leela Wooden Owls of Natungram West Bengal India The wooden owl is an integral part of an ancient and indigenous tradition and art form in Bengal Yama Kalighat School of Art Balabhadra Subhadra and Jagannath idols in Odhisa Early Modern and Colonial Era c 1400 CE c 1800 CE EditMughal art Edit Main article Mughal painting Although Islamic conquests in India were made as early as the first half of the 10th century it wasn t until the Mughal Empire that one observes emperors with a patronage for the fine arts Emperor Humayun during his reestablishment of the Delhi Sultanate in 1555 brought with him Mir Sayyid Ali and Abd al Samad two of the finest painters from Persian Shah Tahmasp s renowned atelier During the reign of Akbar 1556 1605 the number of painters grew from around 30 during the creation of the Hamzanama in the mid 1560s to around 130 by the mid 1590s 51 According to court historian Abu l Fazal Akbar was hands on in his interest of the arts inspecting his painters regularly and rewarding the best 52 It is during this time that Persian artists were attracted to bringing their unique style to the empire Indian elements were present in their works from the beginning with the incorporation of local Indian flora and fauna that were otherwise absent from the traditional Persian style The paintings of this time reflected the vibrancy and inclusion of Akbar s kingdom with production of Persian miniatures the Rajput paintings including the Kangra school and the Pahari style of Northern India They also influenced the Company style watercolor paintings created during the British rule many years later Mughal art of Northern India pre 1600 and its influences Arghan Div Brings the Chest of Armor to Hamza from Volume 7 of the Hamzanama supervised by Samad ca 1562 1577 Opaque watercolor and gold on cotton Abu l Fazl presenting Akbarnama to Akbar Mughal miniature Krishna playing flute ca 1790 1800 Guler Kangra region Opaque watercolor and gold on paper Jama Masjid Delhi Willam Carpenter 1852 Watercolor With the death of Akbar his son Jahangir 1605 1627 took the throne He preferred each painter work on a single piece rather than the collaboration fostered during Akbar s time This period marks the emergence of distinct individual styles notably Bishan Das Manohar Das Abu al Hasan Govardhan and Daulat 53 Jahangir himself had the capability to identify the work of each individual artist even if the work was unnamed The Razmnama Persian translation of the Hindu epic Mahabharata and an illustrated memoir of Jahangir named Tuzuk i Jahangiri were created under his rule Jahangir was succeeded by Shah Jahan 1628 1658 whose most notable architectural contribution is the Taj Mahal Paintings under his rule were more formal featuring court scenes in contrast to the personal styles from his predecessor s time Aurangzeb 1658 1707 who held increasingly orthodox Sunni beliefs forcibly took the throne from his father Shah Jahan With a ban of music and painting in 1680 his reign saw the decline of Mughal patronage of the arts As painting declined in the imperial court artists and the general influence of Mughal painting spread to the princely courts and cities of north India where both portraiture the illustration of the Indian epics and Hindu religious painting developed in many local schools and styles Notable among these were the schools of Rajput Pahari Deccan Kangra painting Mughal art of Northern India post 1600 Jahangir in Darbar from the Jahangir nama c 1620 Gouache on paper Portrait of the emperor Shah Jahan enthroned ca 17th century A durbar scene with the newly crowned Emperor Aurangzeb Other medieval Indian kingdoms Edit The last empire in southern India has left spectacular remains of Vijayanagara architecture especially at Hampi Karnataka often heavily decorated with sculpture These developed the Chola tradition After the Mughal conquest the temple tradition continued to develop mainly in the expansion of existing temples which added new outer walls with increasingly large gopurams often dwarfing the older buildings in the centre These became usually thickly covered with plaster statues of deities and other religious figures which need have their brightly coloured paint kept renewed at intervals so they do not erode away In South Central India during the late fifteenth century after the Middle kingdoms the Bahmani sultanate disintegrated into the Deccan sultanates centered at Bijapur Golconda Ahmadnagar Bidar and Berar They used vedic techniques of metal casting stone carving and painting as well as a distinctive architectural style with the addition of citadels and tombs from Mughal architecture For instance the Baridi dynasty 1504 1619 of Bidar saw the invention of bidri ware which was adopted from Vedic and Maurya period ashoka pillars of zinc mixed with copper tin and lead and inlaid with silver or brass then covered with a mud paste containing sal ammoniac which turned the base metal black highlighting the colour and sheen of the inlaid metal Only after the Mughal conquest of Ahmadnagar in 1600 did the Persian influence patronized by the Turco Mongol Mughals begin to affect Deccan art Deccan art of South Central India The Char Minar mosque in Hyderabad Completed in 1591 Bidriware water pipe base c 18th century Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Gol Gumbaz mausoleum in Bijapur Karnataka Completed in 1656 Portrait of Abu l Hasan the last Sultan of Golconda c late 17th early 18th century Chand Bibi hawking an 18th century Deccan painting gouache heightened with gold on paper British period 1841 1947 EditBritish colonial rule had a great impact on Indian art especially from the mid 19th century onwards Many old patrons of art became less wealthy and influential and Western art more ubiquitous as the British Empire established schools of art in major cities The oldest the Government College of Fine Arts Chennai was established in 1850 In major cities with many Europeans the Company style of small paintings became common created by Indian artists working for European patrons of the East India Company The style mainly used watercolour to convey soft textures and tones in a style combining influences from Western prints and Mughal painting 54 By 1858 the British government took over the task of administration of India under the British Raj Many commissions by Indian princes were now wholly or partly in Western styles or the hybrid Indo Saracenic architecture The fusion of Indian traditions with European style at this time is evident from Raja Ravi Varma s oil paintings of sari clad women in a graceful manner Pre independence Indian art Company painting by Dip Chand c 1760 c 1764 depicting an official of the East India Company perhaps William Fullerton of Rosemount surgeon and mayor of Calcutta in 1757 Tipu s Tiger an 18th century automata with its keyboard visible Victoria and Albert Museum London Shakuntala by Raja Ravi Varma 1870 Oil on canvas Asoka s Queen by Abanindranath Tagore c 1910 Chromoxylograph Bengal School of Art Edit The Bengal School of Art commonly referred as Bengal School was an art movement and a style of Indian painting that originated in Bengal primarily Kolkata and Shantiniketan and flourished throughout the Indian subcontinent during the British Raj in the early 20th century Also known as Indian style of painting in its early days it was associated with Indian nationalism swadeshi and led by Abanindranath Tagore 1871 1951 but was also promoted and supported by British arts administrators like E B Havell the principal of the Government College of Art and Craft Kolkata from 1896 eventually it led to the development of the modern Indian painting Tagore later attempted to develop links with Japanese artists as part of an aspiration to construct a pan Asianist model of art Through the paintings of Bharat Mata Abanindranath established the pattern of patriotism Painters and artists of Bengal school were Nandalal Bose M A R Chughtai Sunayani Devi sister of Abanindranath Tagore Manishi Dey Mukul Dey Kalipada Ghoshal Asit Kumar Haldar Sudhir Khastgir Kshitindranath Majumdar Sughra Rababi Between 1920 and 1925 Gaganendranath pioneered experiments in modernist painting Partha Mitter describes him as the only Indian painter before the 1940s who made use of the language and syntax of Cubism in his painting From 1925 onwards the artist developed a complex post cubist style With the Swadeshi Movement gaining momentum by 1905 Indian artists attempted to resuscitate the cultural identities suppressed by the British rejecting the Romanticized style of the Company paintings and the mannered work of Raja Ravi Varma and his followers Thus was created what is known today as the Bengal School of Art led by the reworked Asian styles with an emphasis on Indian nationalism of Abanindranath Tagore 1871 1951 who has been referred to as the father of Modern Indian art 55 Other artists of the Tagore family such as Rabindranath Tagore 1861 1941 and Gaganendranath Tagore 1867 1938 as well as new artists of the early 20th century such as Amrita Sher Gil 1913 1941 were responsible for introducing Avant garde western styles into Indian Art Many other artists like Jamini Roy and later S H Raza took inspiration from folk traditions In 1944 K C S Paniker founded the Progressive Painters Association PPA thus giving rise to the madras movement in art 56 Bharat Mata by Abanindranath Tagore Journey s End by Abanindranath Tagore Two cats holding a large prawn by Jamini Roy Pratima Visarjan by Gaganendranath Tagore Gaganendranath Tagore Meeting at the Staircase Fresco by Nandalal Bose in Dinantika Ashram Complex Santiniketan Contemporary art c 1900 CE present EditIn 1947 India became independent of British rule A group of six artists K H Ara S K Bakre H A Gade M F Husain S H Raza and Francis Newton Souza founded the Bombay Progressive Artists Group in the year 1952 to establish new ways of expressing India in the post colonial era Though the group was dissolved in 1956 it was profoundly influential in changing the idiom of Indian art Almost all India s major artists in the 1950s were associated with the group Some of those who are well known today are Bal Chabda Manishi Dey V S Gaitonde Krishen Khanna Ram Kumar Tyeb Mehta K G Subramanyan A Ramachandran Devender Singh Akbar Padamsee John Wilkins Himmat Shah and Manjit Bawa 57 Present day Indian art is varied as it had been never before Among the best known artists of the newer generation include Bose Krishnamachari and Bikash Bhattacharjee Painting and sculpture remained important in the later half of the twentieth century though in the work of leading artists such as Nalini Malani Subodh Gupta Narayanan Ramachandran Vivan Sundaram Jitish Kallat GR Iranna Bharati Kher Chittravanu Muzumdar they often found radical new directions Bharti Dayal has chosen to handle the traditional Mithila painting in most contemporary way and created her own style through the exercises of her own imagination they appear fresh and unusual The increase in discourse about Indian art in English as well as vernacular Indian languages changed the way art was perceived in the art schools Critical approach became rigorous critics like Geeta Kapur R Siva Kumar 58 59 Shivaji K Panikkar Ranjit Hoskote amongst others contributed to re thinking contemporary art practice in India Group of Three Girls by Amrita Sher Gil Boating by Jamini Roy Pseudorealistic Indian painting Couple Kids and Confusion by Devajyoti Ray Mural by Satish Gujral Material history of Indian art EditSculpture Edit Main article Sculpture in the Indian subcontinent Chola bronze of Shiva as Nataraja Lord of Dance Tamil Nadu 10th or 11th century The first known sculpture in the Indian subcontinent is from the Indus Valley civilisation 3300 1700 BC found in sites at Mohenjo daro and Harappa in modern day Pakistan These include the famous small bronze male dancerNataraja However such figures in bronze and stone are rare and greatly outnumbered by pottery figurines and stone seals often of animals or deities very finely depicted After the collapse of the Indus Valley civilization there is little record of sculpture until the Buddhist era apart from a hoard of copper figures of somewhat controversially c 1500 BCE from Daimabad 60 Thus the great tradition of Indian monumental sculpture in stone appears to begin relatively late with the reign of Ashoka from 270 to 232 BCE and the Pillars of Ashoka he erected around India carrying his edicts and topped by famous sculptures of animals mostly lions of which six survive 61 Large amounts of figurative sculpture mostly in relief survive from Early Buddhist pilgrimage stupas above all Sanchi these probably developed out of a tradition using wood 62 Indeed wood continued to be the main sculptural and architectural medium in Kerala throughout all historic periods until recent decades 63 During the 2nd to 1st century BCE in far northern India in the Greco Buddhist art of Gandhara from what is now southern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan sculptures became more explicit representing episodes of the Buddha s life and teachings Although India had a long sculptural tradition and a mastery of rich iconography the Buddha was never represented in human form before this time but only through some of his symbols This may be because Gandharan Buddhist sculpture in modern Afghanistan displays Greek and Persian artistic influence Artistically the Gandharan school of sculpture is said to have contributed wavy hair drapery covering both shoulders shoes and sandals acanthus leaf decorations etc The pink sandstone Hindu Jain and Buddhist sculptures of Mathura from the 1st to 3rd centuries CE reflected both native Indian traditions and the Western influences received through the Greco Buddhist art of Gandhara and effectively established the basis for subsequent Indian religious sculpture 62 The style was developed and diffused through most of India under the Gupta Empire c 320 550 which remains a classical period for Indian sculpture covering the earlier Ellora Caves 64 though the Elephanta Caves are probably slightly later 65 Later large scale sculpture remains almost exclusively religious and generally rather conservative often reverting to simple frontal standing poses for deities though the attendant spirits such as apsaras and yakshi often have sensuously curving poses Carving is often highly detailed with an intricate backing behind the main figure in high relief The celebrated lost wax bronzes of the Chola dynasty c 850 1250 from south India many designed to be carried in processions include the iconic form of Shiva as Nataraja 66 with the massive granite carvings of Mahabalipuram dating from the previous Pallava dynasty 67 The Chola period is also remarkable for its sculptures and bronzes 68 Among the existing specimens in the various museums of the world and in the temples of South India may be seen many fine figures of Siva in various forms Vishnu and his wife Lakshmi Siva saints and many more 69 Wall painting Edit Further information Cave paintings in India Fresco from the Ajanta Caves c 450 500 The tradition and methods of Indian cliff painting gradually evolved throughout many thousands of years there are multiple locations found with prehistoric art The early caves included overhanging rock decorated with rock cut art and the use of natural caves during the Mesolithic period 6000 BCE Their use has continued in some areas into historic times 70 The Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka are on the edge of the Deccan Plateau where deep erosion has left huge sandstone outcrops The many caves and grottos found there contain primitive tools and decorative rock paintings that reflect the ancient tradition of human interaction with their landscape an interaction that continues to this day 71 The oldest surviving frescoes of the historical period have been preserved in the Ajanta Caves with Cave 10 having some from the 1st century CE though the larger and more famous groups are from the 5th century Despite climatic conditions that tend to work against the survival of older paintings in total there are known more than 20 locations in India with paintings and traces of former paintings of ancient and early medieval times up to the 8th to 10th centuries CE 72 although these are just a tiny fraction of what would have once existed The most significant frescoes of the ancient and early medieval period are found in the Ajanta Bagh Ellora and Sittanavasal caves the last being Jain of the 7th 10th centuries Although many show evidence of being by artists mainly used to decorating palaces no early secular wall paintings survive 73 The Chola fresco paintings were discovered in 1931 within the circumambulatory passage of the Brihadisvara Temple at Thanjavur Tamil Nadu and are the first Chola specimens discovered Researchers have discovered the technique used in these frescoes A smooth batter of limestone mixture is applied over the stones which took two to three days to set Within that short span such large paintings were painted with natural organic pigments During the Nayak period the Chola paintings were painted over The Chola frescoes lying underneath have an ardent spirit of saivism is expressed in them They probably synchronised with the completion of the temple by Rajaraja Cholan the Great Kerala mural painting has well preserved fresco or mural or wall painting in temple walls in Pundarikapuram Ettumanoor and Aymanam and elsewhere Miniature painting Edit Main articles Indian painting and Mughal painting Akbar riding the elephant Hawa I pursuing another elephant Although few Indian miniatures survive from before about 1000 CE and some from the next few centuries there was probably a considerable tradition Those that survive are initially illustrations for Buddhist texts later followed by Jain and Hindu equivalents and the decline of Buddhist as well as the vulnerable support material of the palm leaf manuscript probably explain the rarity of early examples 74 Mughal painting in miniatures on paper developed very quickly in the late 16th century from the combined influence of the existing miniature tradition and artists trained in the Persian miniature tradition imported by the Mughal Emperor s court New ingredients in the style were much greater realism especially in portraits and an interest in animals plants and other aspects of the physical world 75 Deccan painting developed around the same time in the Deccan sultanates courts to the south in some ways more vital if less poised and elegant 76 Miniatures either illustrated books or were single works for muraqqas or albums of painting and Islamic calligraphy The style gradually spread in the next two centuries to influence painting on paper in both Muslim and Hindu princely courts developing into a number of regional styles often called sub Mughal including Rajput painting Pahari painting and finally Company painting a hybrid watercolour style influenced by European art and largely patronized by the people of the British raj In pahari mountain centres like that of Kangra painting the style remained vital and continued to develop into the early decades of the 19th century 77 From the mid 19th century Western style easel paintings became increasingly painted by Indian artists trained in Government art schools Jewellery Edit Pair of gold earrings 1st century BCE Andhra Pradesh The Indian subcontinent has the longest continuous legacy of jewellery making with a history of over 5 000 years 78 Using jewellery as a store of capital remains more common in India than in most modern societies and gold appears always to have been strongly preferred for the metal India and the surrounding areas were important sources of high quality gemstones and the jewellery of the ruling class is typified by using them lavishly One of the first to start jewellery making were the people of the Indus Valley civilization Early remains are few as they were not buried with their owners Other materials Edit Wood was undoubtedly extremely important but rarely survives long in the Indian climate Organic animal materials such as ivory or bone were discouraged by the Dharmic religions although Buddhist examples exist such as the Begram ivories many of Indian manufacture but found in Afghanistan and some relatively modern carved tusks In Muslim settings they are more common Contextual history of Indian art EditTemple art Edit Main article Indian rock cut architecture Obscurity shrouds the period between the decline of the Harappans and the definite historic period starting with the Mauryas and in the historical period the earliest Indian religion to inspire major artistic monuments was Buddhism Though there may have been earlier structures in wood that have been transformed into stone structures there are no physical evidences for these except textual references Soon after the Buddhists initiated rock cut caves Hindus and Jains started to imitate them at Badami Aihole Ellora Salsette Elephanta Aurangabad and Mamallapuram and Mughals It appears to be a constant in Indian art that the different religions shared a very similar artistic style at any particular period and place though naturally adapting the iconography to match the religion commissioning them 79 Probably the same groups of artists worked for the different religions regardless of their own affiliations Indian art also found its way into Italy within the context of Indo Roman trade in 1938 the Pompeii Lakshmi was found in the ruins of Pompeii destroyed in an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE Buddhist art first developed during the Gandhara period and Amaravati periods around the 1st century BCE It flourished greatly during the Gupta Periods and Pala periods that comprise the Golden Age of India Although the most glorious art of these Indian empires was mostly Buddhist in nature subsequently Hindu Empires like the Pallava Chola Hoysala and Vijayanagara Empires developed their own styles of Hindu art as well There is no time line that divides the creation of rock cut temples and free standing temples built with cut stone as they developed in parallel The building of free standing structures began in the 5th century while rock cut temples continued to be excavated until the 12th century An example of a free standing structural temple is the Shore Temple a part of the Mahabalipuram World Heritage Site with its slender tower built on the shore of the Bay of Bengal with finely carved granite rocks cut like bricks and dating from the 8th century 80 81 Folk and tribal art Edit Warli painting from Maharastra Folk and tribal art in India takes on different manifestations through varied media such as pottery painting metalwork 82 paper art weaving and designing of objects such as jewellery and toys These are not just aesthetic objects but in fact have an important significance in people s lives and are tied to their beliefs and rituals The objects can range from sculpture masks used in rituals and ceremonies paintings textiles baskets kitchen objects arms and weapons and the human body itself tattoos and piercings There is a deep symbolic meaning that is attached to not only the objects themselves but also the materials and techniques used to produce them Often puranic gods and legends are transformed into contemporary forms and familiar images Fairs festivals local heroes mostly warriors and local deities play a vital role in these arts Example Nakashi art from Telangana or Cherial Scroll Painting Folk art also includes the visual expressions of the wandering nomads This is the art of people who are exposed to changing landscapes as they travel over the valleys and highlands of India They carry with them the experiences and memories of different spaces and their art consists of the transient and dynamic pattern of life The rural tribal and arts of the nomads constitute the matrix of folk expression Examples of folk arts are Warli Madhubani Art Manjusha Art Tikuli Art Gond art and Bhil art etc While most tribes and traditional folk artist communities are assimilated into the familiar kind of civilised life they still continue to practice their art Unfortunately though market and economic forces have ensured that the numbers of these artists are dwindling 83 84 A lot of effort is being made by various NGOs and the Government of India to preserve and protect these arts and to promote them Several scholars in India and across the world have studied these arts and some valuable scholarship is available on them The folk spirit has a tremendous role to play in the development of art and in the overall consciousness of indigenous cultures Contextual Modernism Edit Main article Santiniketan The Making of a Contextual Modernism The year 1997 bore witness to two parallel gestures of canon formation On the one hand the influential Baroda Group a coalition whose original members included Vivan Sundaram Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh Bhupen Khakhar and Nalini Malani and which had left its mark on history in the form of the 1981 exhibition Place for People was definitively historicized in 1997 with the publication of Contemporary Art in Baroda an anthology of essays edited by Sheikh On the other hand the art historian R Siva Kumar s benchmark exhibition and related publication A Contextual Modernism restored the Santiniketan artists Rabindranath Tagore Nandalal Bose Benode Behari Mukherjee and Ramkinkar Baij to their proper place as the originators of an indigenously achieved yet transcultural modernism in the 1930s well before the Progressives composed their manifesto in the late 1940s Of the Santiniketan artists Siva Kumar observed that they reviewed traditional antecedents in relation to the new avenues opened up by cross cultural contacts They also saw it as a historical imperative Cultural insularity they realized had to give way to eclecticism and cultural impurity 85 The Kala Bhavana Institute of Fine Arts Santiniketan It boasts an extremely well known faculty and student body It is most famous for the spread of Bengal School of Art The idea of Contextual Modernism emerged in 1997 from R Siva Kumar s Santiniketan The Making of a Contextual Modernism as a postcolonial critical tool in the understanding of an alternative modernism in the visual arts of the erstwhile colonies like India specifically that of the Santiniketan artists Several terms including Paul Gilroy s counter culture of modernity and Tani Barlow s Colonial modernity have been used to describe the kind of alternative modernity that emerged in non European contexts Professor Gall argues that Contextual Modernism is a more suited term because the colonial in colonial modernity does not accommodate the refusal of many in colonized situations to internalize inferiority Santiniketan s artist teachers refusal of subordination incorporated a counter vision of modernity which sought to correct the racial and cultural essentialism that drove and characterized imperial Western modernity and modernism Those European modernities projected through a triumphant British colonial power provoked nationalist responses equally problematic when they incorporated similar essentialisms 86 According to R Siva Kumar The Santiniketan artists were one of the first who consciously challenged this idea of modernism by opting out of both internationalist modernism and historicist indigenousness and tried to create a context sensitive modernism 87 He had been studying the work of the Santiniketan masters and thinking about their approach to art since the early 80s The practice of subsuming Nandalal Bose Rabindranath Tagore Ram Kinker Baij and Benode Behari Mukherjee under the Bengal School of Art was according to Siva Kumar misleading This happened because early writers were guided by genealogies of apprenticeship rather than their styles worldviews and perspectives on art practice 87 Contextual Modernism in the recent past has found its usage in other related fields of studies specially in Architecture 88 Art museums of India EditMajor cities Edit National Museum New Delhi Prince of Wales Museum Mumbai Indian Museum Kolkata National Museum New Delhi Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya CSMVS Mumbai formerly Prince of Wales Museum of Western India Indian Museum Kolkata Salar Jung Museum Hyderabad Government Museum Bangalore Government Museum Chennai Government Museum and Art Gallery Chandigarh Salar Jung Museum Hyderabad Government Museum Chennai Archaeological museums Edit See also Archaeological Survey of India AP State Archaeology Museum Hyderabad Archaeological Museum Thrissur City Museum Hyderabad Government Museum Mathura Government Museum Tiruchirappalli Hill Palace Tripunithura Ernakulam Odisha State Museum Bhubaneswar Patna Museum Pazhassi Raja Archaeological Museum Kozhikode Sanghol Museum Sarnath Museum State Archaeological Gallery Kolkata Victoria Jubilee Museum VijayawadaModern art museums Edit National Gallery of Modern Art New Delhi established 1954 National Gallery of Modern Art Mumbai established 1996 National Gallery of Modern Art Bangalore inaugurated 2009 Kolkata Museum of Modern Art foundation laid in 2013 Other museums Edit Albert Hall Museum Jaipur Allahabad Museum Asutosh Museum of Indian Art Kolkata Baroda Museum amp Picture Gallery Goa State Museum Panaji Napier Museum Thiruvananthapuram National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum New Delhi Sanskriti Museums Delhi Watson Museum Rajkot Srimanthi Bai Memorial Government Museum MangaloreSee also EditIndian painting Government College of Fine Arts Chennai Indian architecture Indian vernacular architecture Crafts of India Rasa art Other Indian Art and Architecture formsIndian art Architecture of India Indo Greek art Art of Mathura Gupta art Mauryan art Kushan art Hoysala architecture Vijayanagara architecture Greco Buddhist art Chola art and architecture Pallava art and architecture Badami Chalukya architectureNotes Edit Jagadish Gupta 1996 Pre historic Indian Painting North Central Zone Cultural Centre Archived from the original on 2020 02 17 Retrieved 2016 02 13 Shiv Kumar Tiwari 1 January 2000s Riddles of Indian Rockshelter Paintings Sarup amp Sons pp 8 ISBN 978 81 7625 086 3 Archived from the original on 22 December 2016 Retrieved 13 February 2016 Cockburn John 1899 Art V Cave Drawings in the Kaimur Range North West Provinces Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain amp Ireland New Series 31 1 89 97 doi 10 1017 S0035869X00026113 S2CID 162764849 Archived from the original on 2021 06 13 Retrieved 2019 09 06 Mathpal Yashodhar 1984 Prehistoric Painting Of Bhimbetka Abhinav Publications p 220 ISBN 9788170171935 Archived from the original on 2020 04 03 Retrieved 2019 08 25 Tiwari Shiv Kumar 2000 Riddles of Indian Rockshelter Paintings Sarup amp Sons p 189 ISBN 9788176250863 Archived from the original on 2020 02 17 Retrieved 2019 08 25 Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka PDF UNESCO 2003 p 16 Archived PDF from the original on 2017 12 04 Retrieved 2019 08 25 Mithen Steven 2011 After the Ice A Global Human History 20 000 5000 BC Orion p 524 ISBN 978 1 78022 259 2 Archived from the original on 2020 02 17 Retrieved 2019 08 25 Javid Ali Javid ʻAli Javeed Tabassum 2008 World Heritage Monuments and Related Edifices in India Algora Publishing p 19 ISBN 978 0 87586 484 6 Archived from the original on 2017 10 11 Retrieved 2019 08 25 Pathak Dr Meenakshi Dubey Indian Rock Art Prehistoric Paintings of the Pachmarhi Hills Bradshaw Foundation Archived from the original on 13 August 2019 Retrieved 7 November 2014 Marshall Sir John Mohenjo Daro and the Indus Civilisation 3 vols London Arthur Probsthain 1931 Keay John India a History New York Grove Press 2000 Harle 15 19 Harle 19 20 a b Paul Pran Gopal Paul Debjani 1989 Brahmanical Imagery in the Kuṣaṇa Art of Mathura Tradition and Innovations East and West 39 1 4 111 143 especially 112 114 115 125 JSTOR 29756891 Paul Pran Gopal Paul Debjani 1989 Brahmanical Imagery in the Kuṣaṇa Art of Mathura Tradition and Innovations East and West 39 1 4 111 143 ISSN 0012 8376 JSTOR 29756891 Krishan Yuvraj Tadikonda Kalpana K 1996 The Buddha Image Its Origin and Development Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan p ix x ISBN 978 81 215 0565 9 Archived from the original on 2020 02 26 Retrieved 2020 09 06 a b c d Shaw Ian Jameson Robert 2008 A Dictionary of Archaeology John Wiley amp Sons p 248 ISBN 978 0 470 75196 1 Archived from the original on 2019 12 23 Retrieved 2020 09 06 Harle 22 28 Harle 22 26 State Emblem Archived May 11 2012 at the Wayback Machine Know India india gov in Harle 39 42 Dated 100 BCE in Fig 88 in Quintanilla Sonya Rhie 2007 History of Early Stone Sculpture at Mathura Ca 150 BCE 100 CE BRILL p 368 Fig 88 ISBN 9789004155374 Archived from the original on 2020 06 09 Retrieved 2019 11 29 a b c d e f Dalal Roshen 2010 The Religions of India A Concise Guide to Nine Major Faiths Penguin Books India pp 397 398 ISBN 978 0 14 341517 6 Archived from the original on 2020 06 09 Retrieved 2019 11 29 Singh Upinder 2008 A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India New Delhi Pearson Education p 430 ISBN 978 81 317 1120 0 yaksha Encyclopaedia Britannica Archived from the original on 3 September 2019 Retrieved 15 July 2007 Sharma Ramesh Chandra 1994 The Splendour of Mathura Art and Museum D K Printworld p 76 ISBN 978 81 246 0015 3 Archived from the original on 2020 06 09 Retrieved 2019 11 29 a b c d e Boardman John 1993 The Diffusion of Classical Art in Antiquity Princeton University Press p 112 ISBN 0 691 03680 2 Fig 85 in Quintanilla Sonya Rhie 2007 History of Early Stone Sculpture at Mathura Ca 150 BCE 100 CE BRILL p Fig 85 p 365 ISBN 9789004155374 Archived from the original on 2020 06 09 Retrieved 2019 11 29 The folk art typifies an older plastic tradition in clay and wood which was now put in stone as seen in the massive Yaksha statuary which are also of exceptional value as models of subsequent divine images and human figures in Agrawala Vasudeva Sharana 1965 Indian Art A history of Indian art from the earliest times up to the third century A D Prithivi Prakashan p 84 Archived from the original on 2020 06 09 Retrieved 2019 11 29 With respect to large scale iconic statuary carved in the round the region of Mathura not only rivaled other areas but surpassed them in overall quality and quantity throughout the second and early first century BCE in Quintanilla Sonya Rhie 2007 History of Early Stone Sculpture at Mathura Ca 150 BCE 100 CE BRILL p 24 ISBN 9789004155374 Archived from the original on 2020 06 13 Retrieved 2019 11 29 Quintanilla Sonya Rhie 2007 History of Early Stone Sculpture at Mathura Ca 150 BCE 100 CE BRILL pp 23 25 ISBN 9789004155374 Archived from the original on 2021 06 24 Retrieved 2019 11 04 Harle 105 117 26 47 Harle 59 70 Harle 105 117 71 84 on Gandhara Harle 68 70 but see p 253 for another exception a b c Stokstad Marilyn 2018 Art History United States Pearson Education pp 306 310 ISBN 978 0 13 447588 2 Department of Asian Art 2000 Shunga Dynasty ca Second First Century B C Archived from the original on November 27 2018 Retrieved November 26 2018 Indian subcontinent Oxford Art Online 2003 Retrieved December 3 2018 Sarkar 2006 Hari smriti New Delhi Kaveri Books p 73 ISBN 8174790756 a b Sarma I K 2001 Sri Subrahmanya Smrti New Delhi Sundeep Prakashan pp 283 290 ISBN 8175741023 Narayaṇa Raya Udaya 2006 Art archaeology and cultural history of India Delhi B R Pub Corp ISBN 8176464929 Xinru Liu The Silk Road in World History New York Oxford University Press 2010 42 Lolita Nehru Origins of the Gandharan Style p 63 Chakravarti Ranabir 2016 01 11 Kushan Empire The Encyclopedia of Empire John Wiley amp Sons Ltd pp 1 6 doi 10 1002 9781118455074 wbeoe147 ISBN 978 1 118 45507 4 Michaels Axel 2004 Hinduism Past and Present Princeton University Press p 40 ISBN 978 0 691 08953 9 Archived from the original on 2020 06 20 Retrieved 2016 02 13 Dhammika Ven S 1994 The Edicts of King Ashoka an English rendering DharmaNet International Archived from the original on March 28 2014 Retrieved 22 November 2014 Beloved of the Gods King Piyadasi s domain and among the people beyond the borders the Cholas the Pandyas Great Living Chola Temples UNESCO 1987 Archived from the original on 5 January 2013 Retrieved 22 November 2014 Khajuraho Group of Monuments UNESCO World Heritage List UNESCO 1986 Archived from the original on 16 November 2018 Retrieved 8 November 2014 Panikkar K M 1955 Presidential Address Indian History Congress Vol 18th Session Calcutta Dehejia Vidya 1997 Representing the Body Gender Issues in Indian Art Delhi Kali for Women Women Unlimited ISBN 978 81 85107 32 5 Seyller John 1987 Scribal Notes on Mughal Manuscript Illustrations Artibus Asiae 48 3 4 247 277 doi 10 2307 3249873 JSTOR 3249873 Fazl Abu l 1927 Ain i Akbari Translated by H Blochmann Asiatic Society of Bengal Daulat Encyclopaedia Britannica Archived from the original on 14 November 2014 Retrieved 13 November 2014 George Michell Catherine Lampert Tristram Holland 1982 In the Image of Man The Indian Perception of the Universe Through 2000 Years of Painting and Sculpture Alpine Fine Arts Collection ISBN 978 0 933516 52 6 Archived from the original on 2016 06 24 Retrieved 2016 02 13 Hachette India 25 October 2013 Indiapedia The All India Factfinder Hachette India pp 130 ISBN 978 93 5009 766 3 Archived from the original on 7 June 2016 Retrieved 13 February 2016 For art s sake The Hindu February 12 2009 Archived from the original on May 25 2011 Retrieved Nov 23 2014 Showcase Artists Collectives National Gallery of Modern Art New Delhi 2012 11 09 Archived from the original on 2018 12 25 Retrieved 2014 11 23 National Gallery of Modern Art New Delhi Archived from the original on 2013 05 09 Retrieved 2012 11 24 Rabindranath Tagore The Last Harvest Archived from the original on 2012 12 04 Retrieved 2012 11 24 Harle 17 20 Harle 22 24 a b Harle 26 38 Harle 342 350 Harle 87 his Part 2 covers the period Harle 124 Harle 301 310 325 327 Harle 276 284 Chopra et al p 186 Tri Title needed p 479 Prehistoric Rock Art art and archaeology com Archived from the original on 2020 04 03 Retrieved 2006 10 17 Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka Archived from the original on 2007 03 08 Retrieved 2006 12 20 Ancient and medieval Indian cave paintings Internet encyclopedia Wondermondo 2010 06 10 Archived from the original on 2018 06 24 Retrieved 2010 06 04 Harle 355 Harle 361 366 Harle 372 382 Harle 400 406 Harle 407 420 Untracht Oppi Traditional Jewelry of India New York Abrams 1997 ISBN 0 8109 3886 3 p15 Harle 59 Thapar Binda 2004 Introduction to Indian Architecture Singapore Periplus Editions pp 36 37 51 ISBN 978 0 7946 0011 2 Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent Archived from the original on 2006 12 11 Retrieved 2006 12 21 dhokra art Archived 2010 12 29 at the Wayback Machine GVSS Gramin Vikas Seva Sanshtha 12 June 2011 Evaluation Study of Tribal Folk Arts and Culture in West Bengal Orissa Jharkhand Chhatisgarh and Bihar PDF Planning Commission Socio Economic Research SER Division Planning Commission Govt of India New Delhi p 53 Archived PDF from the original on 4 March 2016 Retrieved 2 March 2015 globalization has triggered the emergence of a synthetic macro culture is gaining popularity day by day and silently engineering the gradual attrition of tribal folk art and culture Decline of tribal and folk arts lamented Deccan Herald Gudibanda Karnataka India 3 July 2008 Archived from the original on 2 March 2015 Retrieved 2 March 2015 In the wave of electronic media our ancient culture and tribal art have been declining said folklore researcher J Srinivasaiah Hapgood Susan Hoskote Ranjit 2015 Abby Grey And Indian Modernism PDF Grey Art Gallery New York New York University Archived from the original PDF on 3 January 2016 Retrieved 12 March 2021 Gall David Overcoming Polarized Modernities Counter Modern Art Education Santiniketan1Overcoming Polarized Modernities Counter Modern Art Education Santiniketan The Legacy of a Poet s School PDF Hawaii University International Conferences Archived PDF from the original on 3 March 2021 Retrieved 12 March 2021 a b Humanities underground All the Shared Experiences of the Lived World II Archived from the original on 2014 11 20 Retrieved 2014 11 17 Contextual modernism is it possible Steps to improved housing strategy 2011 Archived from the original on 2014 11 29 Retrieved 2014 11 17 References EditHarle J C The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent 2nd edn 1994 Yale University Press Pelican History of Art ISBN 0300062176 Harsha V Dehejia The Advaita of Art Delhi Motilal Banarsidass 2000 ISBN 81 208 1389 8 p 97 Kapila Vatsyayan Classical Indian Dance in Literature and the Arts New Delhi Sangeet Natak Akademi 1977 p 8 Mitter Partha Indian Art Oxford Oxford University Press 2001 ISBN 0 19 284221 8 Further reading Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Art of India Wikiquote has quotations related to Indian art Gupta S P amp Asthana S P 2007 Elements of Indian art Including temple architecture iconography amp iconometry New Delhi Indraprastha Museum of Art and Archaeology Gupta S P amp Shastri Indo Canadian Institute 2011 The roots of Indian art A detailed study of the formative period of Indian art and architecture third and second centuries B C Mauryan and late Mauryan Delhi B R Publishing Corporation Abanindranath Tagore 1914 Some Notes on Indian Artistic Anatomy Indian Society of Oriental Art Calcutta OL 6213535M Kossak Steven 1997 Indian court painting 16th 19th century New York The Metropolitan Museum of Art ISBN 978 0 87099 783 9 see index pages 148 152 Lerner Martin 1984 The flame and the lotus Indian and Southeast Asian art from the Kronos collections New York The Metropolitan Museum of Art ISBN 978 0 87099 374 9 fully online Smith Vincent A 1930 A History Of Fine Art In India And Ceylon The Clarendon Press Oxford Welch Stuart Cary 1985 India art and culture 1300 1900 New York The Metropolitan Museum of Art ISBN 978 0 944142 13 4 fully online Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Indian art amp oldid 1131688025, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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